Democratically elected lawmakers endorsed the policy of killing millions of Jews in the 1940's. That doesn't make the policy something to be admired or even something that should be considered acceptable.
All that the statement of having democratically elected lawmakers pass a law to make something illegal (especially when it has a lawful purpose) is that the possibility exists that the law can be eventually repealed at some point in the future. Its repeal is also likely to be met with much more reasoned thinking and public debate than the law that was originally passed in the first place, but that also implies its repeal is much less likely to happen as well. There is a tendency of government to assume powers unto itself that it didn't have before, and is rare to be newsworthy when that government gives up control.
I don't think you have a clue what life is like in America if you think the "gun culture" is really that bad. Drive-by shootings and gun violence is incredibly rare, and in fact the incidence of it happening has dropped compared to the past in spite of (not because of) gun control laws that may or may not exist in various parts of America.
Don't go believing the utter distortion and lies you hear in news reports and Hollywood movies. They are intentionally distorting trivial things that ordinary people living ordinary lives rarely experience. In America, you might see some guns if you happen to go over to a neighbor's house and they show you their gun collection, if you happen to go hunting with them, or as a side-arm for a security guard or police officer. That is about it. Drive-by shootings are reported in the news because they are rare things, not because they are everyday happenings.
I think you would find life in Wyoming (a state with very relaxed gun control laws) mostly no different than you would find in NSW for the most part, other than the accent of what people are speaking and perhaps a slightly warmer and humid climate in Australia. You would certainly see about the same number of guns in ordinary commerce and work life for most of the same professions.
It would be more a matter of what gets preserved as something of a biological fitness test. It would be unlikely to be the actual printing of guns or the manufacturing of them, but rather the responsible use of those guns... where somebody who ignores safety protocols (or "common sense") will get killed and those who stay safe when using such things or using them sparingly will be more likely to have posterity. Of course that takes more than a couple generations to make such a change to the gene pool.
A creative enough person could kill another without a weapon, and a weapon could be made from many ordinary household objects.
But this gun is only a gun, an unliscenced, unregulated gun that has proven to be less safe than an actual gun. I see no problem which what the police are saying here, but it is a very difficult thing to regulate.
Their concern is that 3-D printers will get better over time and can be improved. That the 1st generation version is a piece of junk is immaterial, and these guys know full well that eventually stuff like this may even get better than the weapons they buy from normal gunsmiths.
You can make a firearm out of raw metal stock and have that be untraceable too, so I really don't understand that argument either.
Yes, you could put watermarks and other sort of stuff like is done sometimes with printed documents (laser printers that put serial numbers into letters they are printing or other things that identify the printer). Then again, such security measures can be overcome with software if you were determined to file off those kind of things too.
The real complaint here is a loss of political control over the lives of other people. That doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzy feelings when somebody treats me or somebody I may know as a slave master. If you put yourself into slavery I suppose that would be acceptable, but I don't willingly want to be in that sort of position. I'm not really sure how many people volunteer for such a position in life either.
The funny thing is that I think eventually something like a "Mr. Fusion" device will be invented by somebody. Admittedly this is still in the realm of science fiction (unlike your flying pig remark), but there is nothing contrary to physical science concepts that prevents a device like that from being made. Unfortunately the task of trying to find a method of producing some sort of nuclear fusion reaction on a practical level has been incredibly difficult.
The other thing is that the current most promising approach to fusion has been Tokamak type reactors like the ITER that are incredibly huge devices that only major national governments could even conceive of building. In the case of ITER, it took the resources of a great many countries to put it together. If you are suggesting that such a reactor could never be miniaturized, I'd have to agree. That isn't the only possible fusion reactor that could ever be built though.
This says nothing about Rossi's device, which I'd agree is a pile of steaming fertilizer. But just because some jerk is making a glorified coffee maker for a million dollars should not be used as proof that a real fusion reactor of some kind is impossible to build in the future. The promise of fusion power is very real, just that it is something which has proven to be very difficult to make in the first place.
BTW, pigs can fly... they just need to be put on airplanes or have a JATO rocket attached to them (with appropriate protests by PETA).
This is pretty much one sided fertilizer on the part of Rossi and his supporters. There have been numerous people who are respected scientists which have offered to open up their labs and perform a proper investigation of this device. Heck, if Rossi is being serious here about this breakthrough, he would be worthy of getting a Nobel Prize in Physics... assuming he could get the scientific concept nailed down and make it reproducible.
Supposedly Rossi had even shipped a prototype to a customer and had the factory all ready to go... about two years ago. There has been nothing since. You would think that something would be available instead of being "six months away" or even longer. Heck, even the device design has changed considerably moving on to the "hot cat" instead of something that was producing supposedly amazing quantities of energy.
At the very least, I'd like to see Rossi step up to the plate and simply let one of these "independent researchers" who care to be able to operate the device and be able to pull the thing apart and find out how it ticks. Rossi refuses to even let somebody else have this device.... which is precisely why most people who are strong skeptics think this is a complete hoax and not worth bothering to investigate any more.
For myself, I don't think there is anything to be had other than an electric coil producing large amounts of heat due to electrical resistance. That is hardly a new phenomena and in fact is something I commonly use to cook my breakfast each morning. There certainly is no nuclear energy processes going on except for perhaps some nuclear (fission) power plant supplying the electricity that Rossi is using in the demonstrations. The onus is upon him to prove otherwise, and Rossi isn't making any effort to try otherwise.
If cold fusion were invented tomorrow everything changes, world politics, anything involving oil or energy production, the environment, space travel, food production, basically everything.
and how would that work ?
Assume for a minute you can head down to your local Home Depot and pick up a portable "Mr. Fusion" 1 MW reactor powered by a single box of Borax laundry detergent (that is a 100 year supply of Boron I should note too). How do you think that would change the world?
First of all, you would no longer be dependent upon utility companies for heating or cooling your home, and even worrying about things like insulation or energy efficiency would go out the window. People living in cold weather climates could put either wires or warm water under their driveways and sidewalks to melt snow and ice and not give a damn about how much that costs. As a side note.... you thought global warming was bad with coal plants and such, just wait until everybody is turning out gigawatts of energy on a personal basis and wondering where all of that heat is going after it has been used for something else!
It would change international relations as oil would no longer be nearly so important except as a lubrication fluid, and even that can be mostly done with renewable resources like corn oil or other vegetable stock sources. Most of the recent wars would become irrelevant as control of petroleum resources would be insignificant.
Transportation costs are largely dependent upon energy costs, thus building locomotives, ships, and even automobiles with these fusion devices would render most transportation costs to trivial levels except for the cost of vehicle construction and paying professional operators (like an airline pilot) or other crew related costs.
Food production is largely a logistical issue as well, where trivial transportation costs would significantly lower food prices as well.
As for space travel is concerned, fusion energy sources for spaceflight would ensure that you could travel to Mars in just a couple of weeks, and even trips to other stars might take just a few dozen years. Certainly interplanetary spaceflight would be a common to the point that even poor people of 3rd world nations could become "astronauts" and go anywhere in the solar system if they cared.
The big question is if such a future could ever happen? It is an interesting promise that has captivated the imagination since the idea of nuclear fusion reactors was even conceived as a remote possibility. Cold Fusion reactors may be a way to get one of those "Mr. Fusion" reactors built, but you would have to prove that they really work as promised. Unfortunately there is more reason to think Andreas Rossi is full of BS and is being intentionally deceptive.
Even though from time to time people try to come up with perpetual energy machines, most of the people who were involved in such scams have moved on to nuclear devices of one sort or another simply because most ordinary people don't really understand nuclear reaction. Those devices, like the e-Cat, are still pretty much perpetual motion machines but re-branded under the guise of some silly nuclear reaction of some kind.
You are correct though that legitimate nuclear energy research is being done besides the ITER project. It is even possible for mere mortals with a modest amount of money and no government grants to be able to engage in legitimate research to make nuclear reactors, such as a software engineer in Brooklyn that is trying to duplicate some of the research of Robert Bussard's work with the Polywell reactor.
There are other efforts that have indicated there may be something to the idea of "cold fusion", but I still think it is nothing more than a scientific curiosity and not something that could be used to make a practical power source.
NASA looks into all sorts of silly things from time to time on the off chance that perhaps one of those wacky ideas might pan out... and because some congressman or senator has made a gentle inquiry wondering if it is bullshit or not. That has nothing to do with the validity of what it is that may be claimed and sadly tax dollars are still being wasted on utter garbage that has nothing to do with science.
Besides, even this crazy theory you are quoting here doesn't seem to have anything to do with the e-Cat other than it is what Ross claims the device is doing without any real proof that anything is happening at all. That isn't happening, and no real 3rd party investigations into the device have happened. Heck, the guy can't even get patents accepted much less prove that anything is going on.
Rossi even claims to have a factory making these things somewhere in Florida, but when the State of Florida decided to go in and check out what was going on (after a "concerned citizen" made a complaint about a nuclear reactor being built in the state without permits and such) Rossi and his agents had to back off and assert that no manufacturing was even taking place in the state. Yeah, funny how that works out when your bluff is called.
I've made my own private inquiries about the device, and the more I push the more I am firmly convinced this is a hoax of the worst possible kind. I don't know what Rossi's end game is, but he doesn't even merit being a good charlatan as well.
Or rather that the term "African-American" is being misused when in fact most people think in reference to a particular skin color and racial stereotype formerly called "negro"? If you were born in Italy, you can be called "Italian-American", or if you were from China you would be "Chinese-American".... hence somebody born in Africa but has obtained U.S. citizenship is an "African-American". For myself, I think the term is further misleading when you apply that title to somebody whose family has been living in America for a dozen generations... as there is a definite difference in cultural attitudes and views about life from people I know who are 1st generation "African-Americans" as opposed to black-skinned Americans who were raised in the negro culture that has developed from the former slaves of old south-eastern USA.
This is splitting hairs, and I should say "woosh" about missing the joke of the original parent post doing a firm tongue-in-cheek jab at how corrupt American business practices have become. There certainly is no need for Elon Musk to claim affirmative action preferences in building his business, in spite of the fact that he can claim African ancestry after a fashion.
Tesla doesn't seem to be having much of a problem in terms of market penetration because their factory has barely been able to keep up with the people willing to simply purchase them over the internet or through convoluted sales venues that make the customers travel across several states or even from other countries and continents in order to make a purchase. Only recently has the delay from making a purchase to getting delivery even approached the logistical limits of the Tesla supply chain rather than dealing with the customer backlog and even paying other customers to "move to the front of the line" to get the delivery earlier.
Simply put, if Tesla is charging what the market can bear on their product, they are simply practicing capitalism... something I didn't think was a crime in America.
As for the government missing out on interest income, I think they are going to more than make up for that loss through corporate income taxes and taxes on the wages of the Tesla employees.... and federal excise taxes on the vehicles themselves. It might be in some weird theory a slight loss to the government, but not much. What it really did was give Tesla some short-term operating capital that allowed the company to be able to hire the employees at the old NUMMI plant at a time when they weren't selling cars.
Elon Musk really is African-American.... born in Africa as sure as anybody else on that continent. That ultimately he has more distantly European ancestors is where the comment flies in the face of reality and I doubt he claims he is "black" on racial profiles... but by definition of the term he deserves that "title" as much as anybody who is an immigrant from Africa.
On the other hand, this particular loan program was available to any American automobile company who bothered to apply. Both GM and Ford applied as well for the same program (and I think GM got some of the money too). That not too many people bother starting their own automobile manufacturing company in America is besides the point I suppose. Indeed I think it came in as a shock that Tesla even qualified for the program as it was really one of those earmarks intended to subsidize some research on the part of GM.... but the law was written in a generic manner so technically anybody could qualify if they happened to be making electric automobiles. Why Fisker didn't bother with the program should say volumes about that company too.
Fail. There is no technical reasons for patents in the first place. Legally, I see no benefit to society to be able to patent what can be accomplished in software if it's just a simple conversion from software logic into solder. What's so inventive about that and why should other people be prevented to come up with the same idea?
Then again, what real benefit does a patent even on a mechanical device actually give to society? Supposedly what you have is a trade off of somebody publishing detailed information about a device (like a light bulb, an airplane, or a phonograph... all have received patents in one form or another over the years) in exchange for getting exclusive rights to manufacture that device.
As a practical matter, the patent system of today really doesn't help out in terms of helping a private individual to be able to have that sort of market exclusivity or even get their idea brought to market at all. The patent system itself if broken not just for software patents, for for patents of every kind.
The problem with your idea of fixing something in silicon is that anything which can be expressed as a computer program can be "fixed in silicon". I'm not even talking something like programmable logic such as FPGAs and such (which clearly are just as "programmable" as RAM), but that you could even take complex software like an operating system and convert it to purely AND/OR gates. Heck, you could even turn a Mozart symphony into nothing but gates and a speaker and sound better than a live performance.
This is sort of the point of Turing machines in general, as they are that malleable. That is what makes them useful, and substantially blurs the line between software and hardware.
If the device does something which can't be done in software.... you might have a point. There clearly are hardware concepts which can't be done in software except as a pure simulation, but the reverse that anything done in software can be done in hardware should be an axiom. The list of things which can be done in software is pretty large though, so you need to be careful even there.
If you really can't put aside technobabble, you need to check out the Turbo Encabulator. Technobabble can get much worse. (See also this Aviation version that seems to be just as good).
The sad part about some of the "technology" in Star Trek is that real phenomena and scientific theories can be used to explain at least some of those concepts (such as quantum teleportation and 3D printers) that should be at least correctly referenced in the current series reboot rather than pulling BS out of their hind end. At the very least, I don't expect to be seeing somebody on Star Trek mistaking parsecs as a unit of time instead of distance.
As bad and as cheesy as Star Trek (in any of the series of that franchise or the movies for that matter) got, it was by far and away better than the standard "science fiction" fare that was produced and arguably is still being produced in Hollywood. Classics like "Plan 9 from Outer Space", "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", and "It Came from Outer Space" were more typical and the real standard that Star Trek needs to be compared against as those were contemporary (at least when Roddenberry was running the franchise).
Film science fiction has always been inferior to the depth and soul searching that happens in print and is a general problem with the medium.
The telecommunications access points (usually at central offices) and forced engineering of telecom equipment standards that required ease of monitoring are things I remember happening in the Reagan administration and certainly were encouraged under Bill Clinton and Bush Sr. as well.
I'm just saying dumping all of this on George W. Bush when there was ample evidence of this kind of thing happening well before he became president is uncalled for.... even though the "war on terrorism" did provide plenty of excuses to expand efforts that happened. It was by far more than just a few phone calls that were monitored on a case by case basis. All that really happened is that the U.S. federal government no longer even bothered to pretend that ordinary citizens had privacy on electronic communications.
As for that Data Center in Utah County (well... part of it is in SL County).... I still shake my head even thinking about what it is that they are doing there.
Strangely, one way that you can evade the government prying into your personal communications is through snail mail.... primarily because nobody bothers to use that any more.
There have been and still are private mints which produce coins. It certainly doesn't require a government to certify the purity and weight of a coin (although that can help in many cases). Government monopolies on coinage are quite common though and private mints have always been a little tricky (even today).
As for certificates of deposit of various kinds (including gold and silver certificates), while the certificates may not in and of themselves have intrinsic value, they do represent items which possess such value. Ultimately the value of those certificates is how reliable the organization which issued them actually can redeem those certificates. As has been the case in recent history, often even governments that once promised to redeem such certificates will instead renounce them or turn them into fiat currency instruments, so there is a genuine danger to holding them.
BTW, thanks for the reference. I would like a chance to read it and will look it up in my local library.
Humble suggestion: Decay the proceeds of political contributions depending on time in office. For example, an outsider running for office gets 100% of the contribution. First term incumbent gets %75, remainder to public finance. Decay to 50%, 25%, etc. per term. Thus it gets expensive to keep the fossils in office.
That is a pretty good solution, other than it would take the votes of the incumbents to make such a change.... thus it has the chance of a snowball surviving the day in Tuscon during the summer of every actually happening.
I wonder whether Tesla negotiates on a per-unit basis like a local dealer does, or whether they follow the old Saturn model of one price for everybody. If the latter, what does the middle man really add to the bargain?
Especially seeing as Tesla has to send out technicians to do any repairs, or have the vehicle shipped back to the factory for repairs.
Besides, don't most of the "exotic" small-hand-build car lines sell directly?
Tesla negotiates with pull down menus on its web page. All their sales force does is simply hold your hand through the process or even just clicks on the buttons for you if you want to arrive at a price for the Tesla vehicle and hate to use a web page. They don't dicker on the price except if you are trying to do some sort of fleet sales contract in volume. They've made some concessions for service and other features, but those are on a case by case basis and not typical.
As for small hand-build car lines, most of those get around the dealership requirements by either selling kits or forcing you to come to their factory for delivery.... so you are in effect buying from the "dealer" anyway and that local auto manufacturer is a member of the local chamber of commerce too. The kits get around the hand-build rules because you aren't really buying an automobile, just a kit.... which either you or a skilled mechanic puts together for you separately that bypasses the dealer laws as well.
This really is all about major auto dealer companies who own major blocks of a great many auto franchises that wants to force Tesla to give them a cut of the money. It certainly has nothing at all to do with protecting mom & pop start up auto dealerships working with just one brand.
Heck, GM tried to do that originally with the Saturn. Fixed price.
And GM got killed by the same dealership laws.... where GM was in a larger pile of smelly stuff by virtue of the fact that it had existing dealerships in the same areas it tried to sell those Saturn automobiles.
The dealers eventually won in the case of Saturn, and there was little GM could do to even stop them. It was a nice try though.
That is completely and totally wrong. The NSA has been wiretapping every single US citizen for the past decade. This is well known. And Bush started it. Obama is only making it bigger. Now the NSA has to build a new, gigantic data center out west to house all the data they're collecting.
You can believe that one if you like.
Do you honestly thing the government (choose whichever one you want) started to listen in just a decade ago? I got some real estate between Manhattan and Brooklyn to sell to you if you believe that one. At best, Bush Jr. only expanded earlier efforts that were well under way and expanded that to include scanning nearly every IP packet transmitted more than a couple hops.
Nixon did plenty of wire tapping himself without warrants, and the technology wasn't even new with his administration. It might be pushing the envelope a bit to go back to the Hoover administration, but the FDR administration definitely kept tabs on communications between nearly all citizens when necessary. J. Edgar definitely collected his share of information about a great many ordinary citizens, and a fair bit by wiretapping too.
Right. So if you see a gold nugget or a piece of gold jewelry on the ground I expect you not to pick it up because it has no value.
Here is a better analogy: If you could manufacture unlimited quantities of Gold with your handy replicator which rearranges atoms on the fly with transporter technology..... would you still be using gold or silver? This is assuming of course that the Mr. Fusion home reactor operating off of tap water also provides unlimited cheap energy to power the replicator.
A society with such devices wouldn't give a damn about things like Euros, but gold and silver would still have some value. In fact, a gold nugget might even have more value... assuming you found it in nature as opposed to some fancy design.
News flash: all currencies are "fiat", and nothing has any "innate" value.
Actually, that would be news if it was true. You are simply wrong.
Gold, silver, and other commodities can and have been used as currencies (even cattle... hence stock certificates) where those commodities are not only exchanged as money but also have value in and of themselves even if they weren't money. I've even used long distance minutes (another commodity) as a genuine currency for purchasing items that had nothing to do with its actual "innate value" like talking to my mother on Mother's Day.
There are fiat currencies though, like the U.S. Dollar and Euros. Those can't be used for anything other than money. But there are plenty of non-fiat currencies as well.... as the U.S. Dollar used to be once upon a time.
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Democratically elected lawmakers endorsed the policy of killing millions of Jews in the 1940's. That doesn't make the policy something to be admired or even something that should be considered acceptable.
All that the statement of having democratically elected lawmakers pass a law to make something illegal (especially when it has a lawful purpose) is that the possibility exists that the law can be eventually repealed at some point in the future. Its repeal is also likely to be met with much more reasoned thinking and public debate than the law that was originally passed in the first place, but that also implies its repeal is much less likely to happen as well. There is a tendency of government to assume powers unto itself that it didn't have before, and is rare to be newsworthy when that government gives up control.
I don't think you have a clue what life is like in America if you think the "gun culture" is really that bad. Drive-by shootings and gun violence is incredibly rare, and in fact the incidence of it happening has dropped compared to the past in spite of (not because of) gun control laws that may or may not exist in various parts of America.
Don't go believing the utter distortion and lies you hear in news reports and Hollywood movies. They are intentionally distorting trivial things that ordinary people living ordinary lives rarely experience. In America, you might see some guns if you happen to go over to a neighbor's house and they show you their gun collection, if you happen to go hunting with them, or as a side-arm for a security guard or police officer. That is about it. Drive-by shootings are reported in the news because they are rare things, not because they are everyday happenings.
I think you would find life in Wyoming (a state with very relaxed gun control laws) mostly no different than you would find in NSW for the most part, other than the accent of what people are speaking and perhaps a slightly warmer and humid climate in Australia. You would certainly see about the same number of guns in ordinary commerce and work life for most of the same professions.
It would be more a matter of what gets preserved as something of a biological fitness test. It would be unlikely to be the actual printing of guns or the manufacturing of them, but rather the responsible use of those guns... where somebody who ignores safety protocols (or "common sense") will get killed and those who stay safe when using such things or using them sparingly will be more likely to have posterity. Of course that takes more than a couple generations to make such a change to the gene pool.
A creative enough person could kill another without a weapon, and a weapon could be made from many ordinary household objects.
But this gun is only a gun, an unliscenced, unregulated gun that has proven to be less safe than an actual gun.
I see no problem which what the police are saying here, but it is a very difficult thing to regulate.
Their concern is that 3-D printers will get better over time and can be improved. That the 1st generation version is a piece of junk is immaterial, and these guys know full well that eventually stuff like this may even get better than the weapons they buy from normal gunsmiths.
You can make a firearm out of raw metal stock and have that be untraceable too, so I really don't understand that argument either.
Yes, you could put watermarks and other sort of stuff like is done sometimes with printed documents (laser printers that put serial numbers into letters they are printing or other things that identify the printer). Then again, such security measures can be overcome with software if you were determined to file off those kind of things too.
The real complaint here is a loss of political control over the lives of other people. That doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzy feelings when somebody treats me or somebody I may know as a slave master. If you put yourself into slavery I suppose that would be acceptable, but I don't willingly want to be in that sort of position. I'm not really sure how many people volunteer for such a position in life either.
The funny thing is that I think eventually something like a "Mr. Fusion" device will be invented by somebody. Admittedly this is still in the realm of science fiction (unlike your flying pig remark), but there is nothing contrary to physical science concepts that prevents a device like that from being made. Unfortunately the task of trying to find a method of producing some sort of nuclear fusion reaction on a practical level has been incredibly difficult.
The other thing is that the current most promising approach to fusion has been Tokamak type reactors like the ITER that are incredibly huge devices that only major national governments could even conceive of building. In the case of ITER, it took the resources of a great many countries to put it together. If you are suggesting that such a reactor could never be miniaturized, I'd have to agree. That isn't the only possible fusion reactor that could ever be built though.
This says nothing about Rossi's device, which I'd agree is a pile of steaming fertilizer. But just because some jerk is making a glorified coffee maker for a million dollars should not be used as proof that a real fusion reactor of some kind is impossible to build in the future. The promise of fusion power is very real, just that it is something which has proven to be very difficult to make in the first place.
BTW, pigs can fly... they just need to be put on airplanes or have a JATO rocket attached to them (with appropriate protests by PETA).
This is pretty much one sided fertilizer on the part of Rossi and his supporters. There have been numerous people who are respected scientists which have offered to open up their labs and perform a proper investigation of this device. Heck, if Rossi is being serious here about this breakthrough, he would be worthy of getting a Nobel Prize in Physics... assuming he could get the scientific concept nailed down and make it reproducible.
Supposedly Rossi had even shipped a prototype to a customer and had the factory all ready to go... about two years ago. There has been nothing since. You would think that something would be available instead of being "six months away" or even longer. Heck, even the device design has changed considerably moving on to the "hot cat" instead of something that was producing supposedly amazing quantities of energy.
At the very least, I'd like to see Rossi step up to the plate and simply let one of these "independent researchers" who care to be able to operate the device and be able to pull the thing apart and find out how it ticks. Rossi refuses to even let somebody else have this device.... which is precisely why most people who are strong skeptics think this is a complete hoax and not worth bothering to investigate any more.
For myself, I don't think there is anything to be had other than an electric coil producing large amounts of heat due to electrical resistance. That is hardly a new phenomena and in fact is something I commonly use to cook my breakfast each morning. There certainly is no nuclear energy processes going on except for perhaps some nuclear (fission) power plant supplying the electricity that Rossi is using in the demonstrations. The onus is upon him to prove otherwise, and Rossi isn't making any effort to try otherwise.
If cold fusion were invented tomorrow everything changes, world politics, anything involving oil or energy production, the environment, space travel, food production, basically everything.
and how would that work ?
Assume for a minute you can head down to your local Home Depot and pick up a portable "Mr. Fusion" 1 MW reactor powered by a single box of Borax laundry detergent (that is a 100 year supply of Boron I should note too). How do you think that would change the world?
First of all, you would no longer be dependent upon utility companies for heating or cooling your home, and even worrying about things like insulation or energy efficiency would go out the window. People living in cold weather climates could put either wires or warm water under their driveways and sidewalks to melt snow and ice and not give a damn about how much that costs. As a side note.... you thought global warming was bad with coal plants and such, just wait until everybody is turning out gigawatts of energy on a personal basis and wondering where all of that heat is going after it has been used for something else!
It would change international relations as oil would no longer be nearly so important except as a lubrication fluid, and even that can be mostly done with renewable resources like corn oil or other vegetable stock sources. Most of the recent wars would become irrelevant as control of petroleum resources would be insignificant.
Transportation costs are largely dependent upon energy costs, thus building locomotives, ships, and even automobiles with these fusion devices would render most transportation costs to trivial levels except for the cost of vehicle construction and paying professional operators (like an airline pilot) or other crew related costs.
Food production is largely a logistical issue as well, where trivial transportation costs would significantly lower food prices as well.
As for space travel is concerned, fusion energy sources for spaceflight would ensure that you could travel to Mars in just a couple of weeks, and even trips to other stars might take just a few dozen years. Certainly interplanetary spaceflight would be a common to the point that even poor people of 3rd world nations could become "astronauts" and go anywhere in the solar system if they cared.
The big question is if such a future could ever happen? It is an interesting promise that has captivated the imagination since the idea of nuclear fusion reactors was even conceived as a remote possibility. Cold Fusion reactors may be a way to get one of those "Mr. Fusion" reactors built, but you would have to prove that they really work as promised. Unfortunately there is more reason to think Andreas Rossi is full of BS and is being intentionally deceptive.
Even though from time to time people try to come up with perpetual energy machines, most of the people who were involved in such scams have moved on to nuclear devices of one sort or another simply because most ordinary people don't really understand nuclear reaction. Those devices, like the e-Cat, are still pretty much perpetual motion machines but re-branded under the guise of some silly nuclear reaction of some kind.
You are correct though that legitimate nuclear energy research is being done besides the ITER project. It is even possible for mere mortals with a modest amount of money and no government grants to be able to engage in legitimate research to make nuclear reactors, such as a software engineer in Brooklyn that is trying to duplicate some of the research of Robert Bussard's work with the Polywell reactor.
There are other efforts that have indicated there may be something to the idea of "cold fusion", but I still think it is nothing more than a scientific curiosity and not something that could be used to make a practical power source.
NASA looks into all sorts of silly things from time to time on the off chance that perhaps one of those wacky ideas might pan out... and because some congressman or senator has made a gentle inquiry wondering if it is bullshit or not. That has nothing to do with the validity of what it is that may be claimed and sadly tax dollars are still being wasted on utter garbage that has nothing to do with science.
Besides, even this crazy theory you are quoting here doesn't seem to have anything to do with the e-Cat other than it is what Ross claims the device is doing without any real proof that anything is happening at all. That isn't happening, and no real 3rd party investigations into the device have happened. Heck, the guy can't even get patents accepted much less prove that anything is going on.
Rossi even claims to have a factory making these things somewhere in Florida, but when the State of Florida decided to go in and check out what was going on (after a "concerned citizen" made a complaint about a nuclear reactor being built in the state without permits and such) Rossi and his agents had to back off and assert that no manufacturing was even taking place in the state. Yeah, funny how that works out when your bluff is called.
I've made my own private inquiries about the device, and the more I push the more I am firmly convinced this is a hoax of the worst possible kind. I don't know what Rossi's end game is, but he doesn't even merit being a good charlatan as well.
Or rather that the term "African-American" is being misused when in fact most people think in reference to a particular skin color and racial stereotype formerly called "negro"? If you were born in Italy, you can be called "Italian-American", or if you were from China you would be "Chinese-American".... hence somebody born in Africa but has obtained U.S. citizenship is an "African-American". For myself, I think the term is further misleading when you apply that title to somebody whose family has been living in America for a dozen generations... as there is a definite difference in cultural attitudes and views about life from people I know who are 1st generation "African-Americans" as opposed to black-skinned Americans who were raised in the negro culture that has developed from the former slaves of old south-eastern USA.
This is splitting hairs, and I should say "woosh" about missing the joke of the original parent post doing a firm tongue-in-cheek jab at how corrupt American business practices have become. There certainly is no need for Elon Musk to claim affirmative action preferences in building his business, in spite of the fact that he can claim African ancestry after a fashion.
Tesla doesn't seem to be having much of a problem in terms of market penetration because their factory has barely been able to keep up with the people willing to simply purchase them over the internet or through convoluted sales venues that make the customers travel across several states or even from other countries and continents in order to make a purchase. Only recently has the delay from making a purchase to getting delivery even approached the logistical limits of the Tesla supply chain rather than dealing with the customer backlog and even paying other customers to "move to the front of the line" to get the delivery earlier.
Simply put, if Tesla is charging what the market can bear on their product, they are simply practicing capitalism... something I didn't think was a crime in America.
As for the government missing out on interest income, I think they are going to more than make up for that loss through corporate income taxes and taxes on the wages of the Tesla employees.... and federal excise taxes on the vehicles themselves. It might be in some weird theory a slight loss to the government, but not much. What it really did was give Tesla some short-term operating capital that allowed the company to be able to hire the employees at the old NUMMI plant at a time when they weren't selling cars.
Elon Musk really is African-American.... born in Africa as sure as anybody else on that continent. That ultimately he has more distantly European ancestors is where the comment flies in the face of reality and I doubt he claims he is "black" on racial profiles... but by definition of the term he deserves that "title" as much as anybody who is an immigrant from Africa.
On the other hand, this particular loan program was available to any American automobile company who bothered to apply. Both GM and Ford applied as well for the same program (and I think GM got some of the money too). That not too many people bother starting their own automobile manufacturing company in America is besides the point I suppose. Indeed I think it came in as a shock that Tesla even qualified for the program as it was really one of those earmarks intended to subsidize some research on the part of GM.... but the law was written in a generic manner so technically anybody could qualify if they happened to be making electric automobiles. Why Fisker didn't bother with the program should say volumes about that company too.
Fail. There is no technical reasons for patents in the first place.
Legally, I see no benefit to society to be able to patent what can be accomplished in software if it's just a simple conversion from software logic into solder. What's so inventive about that and why should other people be prevented to come up with the same idea?
Then again, what real benefit does a patent even on a mechanical device actually give to society? Supposedly what you have is a trade off of somebody publishing detailed information about a device (like a light bulb, an airplane, or a phonograph... all have received patents in one form or another over the years) in exchange for getting exclusive rights to manufacture that device.
As a practical matter, the patent system of today really doesn't help out in terms of helping a private individual to be able to have that sort of market exclusivity or even get their idea brought to market at all. The patent system itself if broken not just for software patents, for for patents of every kind.
The problem with your idea of fixing something in silicon is that anything which can be expressed as a computer program can be "fixed in silicon". I'm not even talking something like programmable logic such as FPGAs and such (which clearly are just as "programmable" as RAM), but that you could even take complex software like an operating system and convert it to purely AND/OR gates. Heck, you could even turn a Mozart symphony into nothing but gates and a speaker and sound better than a live performance.
This is sort of the point of Turing machines in general, as they are that malleable. That is what makes them useful, and substantially blurs the line between software and hardware.
If the device does something which can't be done in software.... you might have a point. There clearly are hardware concepts which can't be done in software except as a pure simulation, but the reverse that anything done in software can be done in hardware should be an axiom. The list of things which can be done in software is pretty large though, so you need to be careful even there.
If you really can't put aside technobabble, you need to check out the Turbo Encabulator. Technobabble can get much worse. (See also this Aviation version that seems to be just as good).
The sad part about some of the "technology" in Star Trek is that real phenomena and scientific theories can be used to explain at least some of those concepts (such as quantum teleportation and 3D printers) that should be at least correctly referenced in the current series reboot rather than pulling BS out of their hind end. At the very least, I don't expect to be seeing somebody on Star Trek mistaking parsecs as a unit of time instead of distance.
As bad and as cheesy as Star Trek (in any of the series of that franchise or the movies for that matter) got, it was by far and away better than the standard "science fiction" fare that was produced and arguably is still being produced in Hollywood. Classics like "Plan 9 from Outer Space", "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", and "It Came from Outer Space" were more typical and the real standard that Star Trek needs to be compared against as those were contemporary (at least when Roddenberry was running the franchise).
Film science fiction has always been inferior to the depth and soul searching that happens in print and is a general problem with the medium.
The telecommunications access points (usually at central offices) and forced engineering of telecom equipment standards that required ease of monitoring are things I remember happening in the Reagan administration and certainly were encouraged under Bill Clinton and Bush Sr. as well.
I'm just saying dumping all of this on George W. Bush when there was ample evidence of this kind of thing happening well before he became president is uncalled for.... even though the "war on terrorism" did provide plenty of excuses to expand efforts that happened. It was by far more than just a few phone calls that were monitored on a case by case basis. All that really happened is that the U.S. federal government no longer even bothered to pretend that ordinary citizens had privacy on electronic communications.
As for that Data Center in Utah County (well... part of it is in SL County).... I still shake my head even thinking about what it is that they are doing there.
Strangely, one way that you can evade the government prying into your personal communications is through snail mail.... primarily because nobody bothers to use that any more.
There have been and still are private mints which produce coins. It certainly doesn't require a government to certify the purity and weight of a coin (although that can help in many cases). Government monopolies on coinage are quite common though and private mints have always been a little tricky (even today).
As for certificates of deposit of various kinds (including gold and silver certificates), while the certificates may not in and of themselves have intrinsic value, they do represent items which possess such value. Ultimately the value of those certificates is how reliable the organization which issued them actually can redeem those certificates. As has been the case in recent history, often even governments that once promised to redeem such certificates will instead renounce them or turn them into fiat currency instruments, so there is a genuine danger to holding them.
BTW, thanks for the reference. I would like a chance to read it and will look it up in my local library.
Humble suggestion: Decay the proceeds of political contributions depending on time in office. For example, an outsider running for office gets 100% of the contribution. First term incumbent gets %75, remainder to public finance. Decay to 50%, 25%, etc. per term. Thus it gets expensive to keep the fossils in office.
That is a pretty good solution, other than it would take the votes of the incumbents to make such a change.... thus it has the chance of a snowball surviving the day in Tuscon during the summer of every actually happening.
I wonder whether Tesla negotiates on a per-unit basis like a local dealer does, or whether they follow the old Saturn model of one price for everybody. If the latter, what does the middle man really add to the bargain?
Especially seeing as Tesla has to send out technicians to do any repairs, or have the vehicle shipped back to the factory for repairs.
Besides, don't most of the "exotic" small-hand-build car lines sell directly?
Tesla negotiates with pull down menus on its web page. All their sales force does is simply hold your hand through the process or even just clicks on the buttons for you if you want to arrive at a price for the Tesla vehicle and hate to use a web page. They don't dicker on the price except if you are trying to do some sort of fleet sales contract in volume. They've made some concessions for service and other features, but those are on a case by case basis and not typical.
As for small hand-build car lines, most of those get around the dealership requirements by either selling kits or forcing you to come to their factory for delivery.... so you are in effect buying from the "dealer" anyway and that local auto manufacturer is a member of the local chamber of commerce too. The kits get around the hand-build rules because you aren't really buying an automobile, just a kit.... which either you or a skilled mechanic puts together for you separately that bypasses the dealer laws as well.
This really is all about major auto dealer companies who own major blocks of a great many auto franchises that wants to force Tesla to give them a cut of the money. It certainly has nothing at all to do with protecting mom & pop start up auto dealerships working with just one brand.
Heck, GM tried to do that originally with the Saturn. Fixed price.
And GM got killed by the same dealership laws.... where GM was in a larger pile of smelly stuff by virtue of the fact that it had existing dealerships in the same areas it tried to sell those Saturn automobiles.
The dealers eventually won in the case of Saturn, and there was little GM could do to even stop them. It was a nice try though.
That is completely and totally wrong. The NSA has been wiretapping every single US citizen for the past decade. This is well known. And Bush started it. Obama is only making it bigger. Now the NSA has to build a new, gigantic data center out west to house all the data they're collecting.
You can believe that one if you like.
Do you honestly thing the government (choose whichever one you want) started to listen in just a decade ago? I got some real estate between Manhattan and Brooklyn to sell to you if you believe that one. At best, Bush Jr. only expanded earlier efforts that were well under way and expanded that to include scanning nearly every IP packet transmitted more than a couple hops.
Nixon did plenty of wire tapping himself without warrants, and the technology wasn't even new with his administration. It might be pushing the envelope a bit to go back to the Hoover administration, but the FDR administration definitely kept tabs on communications between nearly all citizens when necessary. J. Edgar definitely collected his share of information about a great many ordinary citizens, and a fair bit by wiretapping too.
Right. So if you see a gold nugget or a piece of gold jewelry on the ground I expect you not to pick it up because it has no value.
Here is a better analogy: If you could manufacture unlimited quantities of Gold with your handy replicator which rearranges atoms on the fly with transporter technology..... would you still be using gold or silver? This is assuming of course that the Mr. Fusion home reactor operating off of tap water also provides unlimited cheap energy to power the replicator.
A society with such devices wouldn't give a damn about things like Euros, but gold and silver would still have some value. In fact, a gold nugget might even have more value... assuming you found it in nature as opposed to some fancy design.
News flash: all currencies are "fiat", and nothing has any "innate" value.
Actually, that would be news if it was true. You are simply wrong.
Gold, silver, and other commodities can and have been used as currencies (even cattle... hence stock certificates) where those commodities are not only exchanged as money but also have value in and of themselves even if they weren't money. I've even used long distance minutes (another commodity) as a genuine currency for purchasing items that had nothing to do with its actual "innate value" like talking to my mother on Mother's Day.
There are fiat currencies though, like the U.S. Dollar and Euros. Those can't be used for anything other than money. But there are plenty of non-fiat currencies as well.... as the U.S. Dollar used to be once upon a time.